Ending suspense over the candidate from the Kangra Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress has decided to field senior party leader Anand Sharma from the seat.

The Congress central election committee announced the names of Anand Sharma and Satpal Raizada as party candidates from Kangra and Hamirpur seats.

It would be Brahmin versus Brahmin in the Kangra parliamentary constituency as the BJP has already decided to field Rajiv Bharadwaj, presently vice president of the state BJP and nephew of former Chief Minister Shanta Kumar.

During his active political career spanning five decades, Sharma was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1984, 1994, 2010 and 2016. He served as Union Minister of Commerce from 2009 to 2014. Sharma was also the Youth Congress president and chairperson and member of various Standing Committees of the Parliament.

This is the first Lok Sabha elections that Sharma will be contesting. He had also been a deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha.

The Congress has fielded former MLA from Una Satpal Raizada from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat against four times MP and Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur, who is the son of former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal. Raizada remained the Congress MLA from Una from 2017 to 2022.

Its Raja (King) of erstwhile Rampur state Vikramaditya Singh verses ''queen film'' fame actor Kangana Ranaut in the Mandi Lok Sabha seat. The Congress had earlier fielded Uttarakhand Public Works Minister Vikramaditya Singh, the son of six times Chief Minister late Virbhadra Singh and state Congress chief Pratibha Singh, against actor Kangana Ranaut, the BJP candidate from the Mandi Lok Sabha seat.

Singh, two times MLA from Shimla (Rural) assembly constituency, is pitched against Ranaut, who hails from a village in Mandi and is also a producer and director by profession. It is for the first time that a celebrity is contesting the elections in the state.

Congress leader Vinod Sultanpuri, the sitting legislator from Kasauli assembly seat and son of six times MP from Shimla (reserve) seat late Kishan Dutt Sultanpuri, is contesting against former state president and sitting BJP MP Suresh Kahyap from the Shimla Lok Sabha seat.